Thanks to a quirk in the legal structure used to set up the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust, known as SPY, more than $250 billion rests on the longevity of 11 ordinary kids born between May 1990 and January 1993.

LMFAO.

Those children are now carving out careers in public relations, restaurants and sales, spread around the country from Boston and Philadelphia to Alabama and Utah. But none of the eight spoken to by Bloomberg News was aware of their role in investing history.

At least 8 of the 11 named in SPY’s documents have a family connection to the American Stock Exchange, which structured the first ETF and was bought by NYSE Euronext in 2008. For example, Most -- the grad student -- is the grandson of Nathan Most, one of the creators of SPY.

Oh yeah... keeping it (power, in this case, rather than money) in the family.

Claire McGrath was a lawyer in the options division of the AMEX in the early nineties. She remembers a call going out for babies’ names that could be used by the trust and volunteered her son, Kevin, and two nephews, Paul and Peter Pavelka.

Seriously?

Jay Baker, now director of capital markets at Exchange Traded Concepts, an ETF issuer, says he put forward his daughter’s name. “They needed some names,” said Baker. “I think somebody said ‘Would you volunteer your daughter?’ and obviously she didn’t have a say in it -- and I was fine with it. It was just part of the process.”

That sounds weird to me... just... weird.

One of the few non-AMEX-related people mentioned in SPY’s documents is Elizabeth Angel, an Atlanta-based engineer, and daughter of Jim Angel, a renowned finance professor at Georgetown University.

I guess you're either part of the structure/network, or you ain't shit - but we all knew that.

Look at the jobs these people hold too, I'd consider them "successful" - I bet they all wear their fancy pants and tow the line just right!

Alexander Most, 27, who’s about to start graduate school, studying education, policy and management

Kevin now works in PR in New York, while Paul and Peter are based in Philadelphia, tending bar at a trendy restaurant and working for the city’s water department, respectively.

Birmingham, Alabama-based siblings Rian and John Imwalle (no more info?)

Emily Weber, 26, who works in enterprise sales in New York.

Elizabeth Angel, an Atlanta-based engineer

SPY isn’t the only ETF set up in this way. Seven other funds were also set up as unit investment trusts, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

So this is basically a tactic then? Not just a one off - good to know.